The lazy blogger’s guide to using Pinterest to grow my audience

As a new(ish) blogger, I’ve spent a lot of time consuming everything to do with getting my blog out there – especially using Pinterest to grow my audience.

But I’m lazy at heart.

With so many other things to do (baby stuff, fitness stuff, writing stuff, life stuff), I just don’t have the time to dedicate a million hours to cultivating the perfect Pinterest strategy. So I needed to come up with a quick and easy way of using Pinterest to grow my blog.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m clueless when it comes to pinning. Prior to starting this blog, I never actually used Pinterest. Which really didn’t help when I read that it was one of the best ways to get your content seen by the masses.

Now, I wouldn’t say that masses see my stuff. But since I started using Pinterest to grow my audience properly, a lot more do than before. And my traffic is slowly growing everyday.

So what did I do?

How I’m using Pinterest to grow my audience

This is the absolute plonkers guide as I’ve seen many out there that are much more detailed. But I still struggle to really understand them. And as mentioned, I don’t have the time to faff with it anyway.

So, the steps I’ve taken so far are…

1) Actually tidy up my boards and pin regularly on Pinterest (I’m Muffin top mummy if you want to join me!)

It makes a difference because it’s much nicer when you land on my profile.

2) Make pretty pins

My pins were rubbish until I upped my game and bought some gorgeous stock photos. I overlay my title text or a cheeky snippet of what’s to come, and then whack them in my post and onto Pinterest. My keyword game is still pretty weak, but sexy pins definitely help with the saves!

3) Enable Rich pins

Don’t ask me how I did this – Google it because I’ve got no idea. I’ve heard it’s a good thing to do, my pins look better and I have analytics on my account. Always a winner.

4) Join group boards

I found this so hard at the start because I didn’t know how to find any that would let me in. Until I just copied a fellow mother blogger and requested all those she was part of. And now I’m in loads. If you’re just starting out, you’re more than welcome to simply copy all of mine!

5) Use a scheduler

This isn’t going to be a big sell, don’t worry. I can’t pin half as much as I’m supposed to without a scheduler, so I tried the free trials of both Tailwind and Boardbooster. Although I loved both, I found that ultimately, Boardbooster gave me more freedom and could do more for me, so signed up. Now it pins throughout the day for me – to both my boards and the groups I’m part of – which has massively increased my visibility. If you did fancy signing up, using this link will give me a little boost. But please only use it if you actually want to join Boardbooster!*

6) Read the content of my repins

I read somewhere that it’s all well and good saving pins to your boards, but Pinterest likes it when you click through too. It makes you a bit more of an engaged user. So I try to make time to actually read the blog posts behind the pins I save. Which kind of makes sense really…

7) Set aside time to schedule and manually pin

Once a week, I make sure my secret boards are full for the week ahead (a Boardbooster thing). I then also pop on every so often and pin a few extra things myself. It can’t hurt to boost your pinning that little bit more, can it!?

There’s so much more I could be doing, and so many more ways I could be using Pinterest to grow my audience. And in the future, once the magic time fairy has given me all the time in the world, I’m sure I will. But for now, I am seeing my stats slowly increase by basically doing the bare minimum.

And that suits me down to the ground!

Do you have any more tips or tricks for Pinterest? Let me know in the comments below.

*This post contains an affiliate link that I’m only sharing because I genuinely use and enjoy the product.

It took me agggges to pluck up the courage, and to be honest, I really do do the bare minimum, but I have started getting traffic from it and I can see how it could easily be a major source the more I put into it (if I find the time haha!).

I’m not sure what I’m doing with Pinterest! I have lots of boards and have swapped to a business account but I’m just not sure what to do next! How do you join group boards? That’s what I find hard! Thanks for sharing though. Great post. #blogstravaganza

Literally – I found a blogger with lots of ‘mummy/blogger’ group boards and emailed each one to ask if I could join. Loads let me in and now I pin to them using Boardbooster. Takes a bit of time setting all that up – but now it’s all automated it’s easy! X

I used to use Pinterest all the time before I started blogging, I would spend hours on there, but for some reason I don’t go on much these days. I really need to sort that out though as I keep hearing people saying how amazing it is for blog traffic! Love this post for giving me a little push to get going again with it! x #TheListLinky

Hi there, my name is Lucy and I live with my husband and baby daughter in the Midlands. Muffin top mummy is where I share all my sensible thoughts on the joys of parenting and the celebration of love-handles.
info@muffintopmummy.com